recent months. His only sadness was that having confessed to it, he would now have to find a new boat and a new berth. Cecil would get his own men to identify the ship and where it lay, and a vessel that was known to his enemy was no use to Gresham, however beautiful it was. The Anna was small, a barque, yet with three masts, the first two square-rigged and the third lanteen-rigged, but for all her small size she was a thing of great intricacy and perfect in her form, well able to stand the storms of the Channel if the need arose. Her previous owner had died at sea; his widow wanted a quick sale.
Mannion may have hated Scotland, but he hated sea journeys even more. Yet even he had to admit that if one had to go to Scotland it was better to go by sail than to face endless weeks on a horse or, even worse, a bone-shattering carriage. They rounded a corner with a timber-framed house leaning crazily forward as if it wanted to kiss the earth, the horses slipping on the mire and filth that lay on the road, and before them was the Anna.
Gresham had been summoned to Cecil two days earlier, a measure of Cecil's concern being that he would only hand the letter to Gresham in person. An extra measure was the fact that the meeting was not in any Palace, but in Cecil's surprisingly modest London home. It was the place where he kept the servants most loyal to him. Gresham knew that much from having tried to bribe them all without success. The transaction had been brief and businesslike. The house and the servants were draped in black. Lord Burghley's death had just been announced. Had Cecil loved his father? If he had, he was not showing it.
If it became known that Gresham was going to Scotland with a message for its King, he might as well slit his own throat and save someone else the trouble of doing it. So how could he disguise his mission?
The answer had been Mannion's idea. It was highly audacious, so much so that Gresham did not bother to clear it with Cecil in advance. It was more fun that way.
'You've said it yerself often enough. Hide the truth by telling it. Tell 'em you're going to Scotland.'
'Brilliant!' said Gresham. 'And tell them I've a letter from Robert Cecil to the King of Scotland?'
'No,' said Mannion, 'tell 'em you've reason to believe that girl you took on board, and who's the biggest pain in your life, actually had a Scottish father. Tell 'em you're going to try and unite her with her blood relations — which is the best way you can see of getting 'er off your back, an' the sooner the better. You'll be very convincing on that score, I reckon.'
'Hang on,' said Gresham. 'Apart from the prospect of spending quite a long period of time with the bloody girl, and the fact that she'll almost certainly throw a fit and lock herself in her room for a year if I even mention it, I'm implicated in every plot that's going at present. So does it really make sense for me to announce I'm going to Scotland, when everyone knows James is one of the main contenders for the throne?'
'Makes sense if you gets a permit from the bloody Queen,' said Mannion. 'You know her well enough. Ain't many people going up to Scotland on a regular basis, things being what they are. Mebbe she wants a letter delivered as well.' Mannion obviously thought he'd made a joke.
The problem was that the old drunkard might be right. Going to Scotland with a passport from the Queen was the best cover of all. But the first problem was the girl, who was most likely to reject any suggestion that she might come simply because it came from him. The second problem was the Queen. Her body might be ageing rapidly, but there was no sign of the decay entering her brain. Could he fool her into granting him a passport? When she had knighted him ten years earlier in that terrible dungeon in the Tower of London, the sword she had used could just have easily gone through his neck as tapped him on the shoulder. The work he had done since had both harmed and helped his standing with her — if anyone ever knew what their standing was with the Queen.
He gained an audience surprisingly quickly considering everyone in England wanted a private audience with the Queen. Yet perhaps it was not so surprising. Increasingly the old lady seemed to act on a whim, living for the moment as if she realised that her own moments were more and more limited by time, the one thing over which she and no other human had control.
Delay. That was the problem. Elizabeth had always had an uncanny knack of letting time sort her problems out for her. Outsiders saw it as vacillation, but Gresham was not so sure. In this instance he needed a firm answer from a woman to whom firm answers were increasingly becoming an anathema.
The only thing shocking about her today was the extraordinary red wig she was wearing. The gimlet eyes were as hard as ever, her breath capable of knocking a fly out of the sky at fifty yards, and the jewels on her lavish dress enough to buy an army. It was early evening, when the majority of England whose lamp and candle was the sun were heading to their beds. Whitehall Palace proved its usual warren, but Gresham realised how serious things were when he was ushered through a string of rooms and suddenly found his male escort replaced by giggling ladies-in-waiting. His audience was being held in the chamber directly outside the Queen's bedroom. What was even more frightening was that, with a quick nod, she dismissed the female attendants. Gresham hoped for Mannion's sake they had been banished to whatever antechamber he had been forced to leave him in. Some of the ladies-in-waiting were known to be keen on a bit of rough.
If he had not known better he would have sworn the Queen had been crying. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, the make-up beneath them showing signs of rapid and rather ineffective repair. It was said that she had hand-fed Burghley the old man's last meals on earth, like a mother feeding her young child.
'So, Sir Henry!' the monarch exclaimed, 'the rare moment comes when you ask to see me! I seem to recollect that for much of my reign it has been my job to command you to attend my Court.' The tone was harsh, combative. It was as if she wished to banish any concept of softness.
He was alone with the Queen. She was in a black gown, with a high neck, its folds sparkling. It was what passed as casual wear for the Queen but still had enough whalebone in it to strip a decent-sized whale of its skeleton.
'Your Highness, I-' Gresham started to say.
'Your Highness,' carried on the Queen, in a fair copy of Gresham's tone, 'I recognise the threat you pose to my existence, and your absolute power over my fortunes. I am rich enough not to need your patronage, arrogant enough not to seek your approval in normal times and intelligent enough to be able to flatter you more amusingly than most.'
The Queen paused. Gresham doubted that the Italian who had just set up in London teaching people the manners of the Court would have an answer as to what one did when the Queen started to mimic you. She was seated in a high-backed chair that was not quite a small throne. A fine Venetian glass had been left by her ladies, and she leant over daintily to sip from it. It was as likely to be boiled water as wine, if Gresham's experience was anything to go by.
'Do tell me. Have I summed you up?' Her tone was deadly serious. And when the daughter of Henry VIII used anything deadly, wise men listened.
Ah well. Men — and women — only had one life. What was life without risk? And who wanted to die in their bed of old age?
'Your Majesty, the greatest flattery I can afford you is to acknowledge that my wealth can be confiscated by a wave of your hand, the seat of my arrogance severed from its neck by a wave of altogether different material, and intelligent enough to realise that I am at this moment desperately trying to think out stratagems that will avoid either eventuality. Or, to put it more simply, yes. You have summed me up. Rather too well, as it happens.'
The Queen looked at Gresham for a moment, her expression unfathomable. Then she spoke, 'I have tolerated you because even with your arrogance and shameless good looks you have done me good service, but also because of all the people I have known in my time your superb flattery has never been offered other than with a supreme awareness that it was simply flattery and not the truth.' She leant forward. There was real anger in her eyes. 'I know more than you think I know about your role in the fate of my sister, Mary Queen of Scots.'
Gresham had decided in his youth that to reveal one's fears and one's emotions was the ultimate weakness, and had imposed a rigid self-control on his body. It was only that which enabled him to stop going white.
'I know what you know about the first Armada. I think I could be said to have drawn it from you on the rack.'
The hint of a smile played across that small part of her lips liberated from make-up. Brave men had been known to burst into tears and confess their all when simply shown the rack. Gresham had been strapped into it and the torture about to start when he had held that particular conversation with the Queen. The strangest thing had not been her presence in the torture chamber, but that she had come to the Tower of London at all. She hated that place above all others, ever since she had entered in through Traitor's Gate, accused of treason by her sister Queen Mary.
'And then there are the other affairs, those I have known about, those I know about that were intended to be
